Abstract: The section on “alienation labor and private property” in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 by Karl Marx reveals the inherent contradiction of “capital-labor” and it is by no means a direct imitation of the “master-slave-dialectics” in the Spiritual Phenomenology, but a structural analysis of the basic contradictions in the modern society, which typically demonstrates the total thinking of the dialectic with the “concrete totality” as its core. In the manuscripts, the realistic theme of the historical dialectics is the overall criticism and reconstruction of modern society with the contradictions of “capital-labor” as the core issue. Meanwhile, the combination of the speculative tradition of German classical philosophy with the empirical positivist paradigm of British political economy provides an ideological basis for “scientific abstract method” in creating materialist historical dialectics beyond the dialectic of German conceptualism. In the process of going beyond Hegel's speculative dialectics, Marx was enlightened by the sensibility principle initiated by Feuerbach and the positivist research method of British political economy with empiricism tradition, and therefore, it may be argued that only by regarding the dialectics of “capital-labor” as the “concrete totality” of the dialectics in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, can we grasp deeply its initiative historical status and methodological value.

Key words: Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, capital-labor dialectics, concrete totality